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Monday, June 06, 2005

As I drove into the red and blue coloured Hindustan Petroleum bunk to fill petrol, I did not expect anything different from any other visit. How wrong I was.

It was early morning and a newspaper was given to us. The windscreen was wiped clean without our asking for it. The attendant who filled air in our car (a Zen), checked the air pressure mandated for it with us rather than fill it by pure judgement. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the journey looking only for HP pumps whenever I needed fuel.

Auto fuel is after all a commodity. We do have branded petrol (Speed for example) and diesel, but better service like this at pumps can attract more wheels driving to your pump. What if I had a good eatery at a pump like this?

2 comments:

Ankan
said...

Good to know that the State Oil Companies like HPCL, IOC and BPCL have woken up!

Next time when you travel, try Reliance Petrol bunks. You could be in for more pleasant surprises!

For one, Reliance Petrol bunks price their products little lower than the state oil companies. For example, in Bangalore the petrol (unleaded) sells at Rs 44.22 per litre. Reliance sells the same thing at Rs 44.08 per litre.

Secondly, the bunks have decent clean restrooms and provide you with Aquaguard water. And they dont frown when you fill in your extra water bottles.

1. They ask you how many litres you want. 2. Next you release the fuel inlet door and tell 10 litres 3. One of them push in the fuel dispenser nozzle into the fuel inlet of the car. 4. The other keep talking to you telling that ICICI has a good offer with a 5% return on their credit card 5. When you suddenly remember that you have not noticed the fuel indicator and look up to see that it is already at 4 litres 6. There is no way to check if they have started with zero or the previous customers value. 7. You quietly pay up and after few days you find that the car ran out of fuel after 6 litres. 8. This happened to me. So check that the meter is zero before you tell how much fuel you need.

One more thing. When I went to this same outlet one morning at around 5 am, this guy had a conical measuring can of 5 litres full of petrol. He asked me to take that instead of from the dispenser. He explained that the tank overflowed and he collected some in cans. Of course I was scared to take that as I had to drive all the way to Bangalore and could not afford a breakdown.